It's actually pretty relevant because those are the things that will be created. And no, they won't be testing it in that manner because anything that actually interacts with the code is not allowed.

Members of this community have proven themselves to be adept at coding. Consider:

1. Hypothetical Feature A is on the developer's list, prioritized at number 1493/7400 in the list of things to do.

2. Hypothetical community member @codewarrior69 comes up with a user generated program to do Hypothetical Feature A. This program does not violate the ToS or EULA. This imaginary program does not interact with the game code itself but operates external to STO, not even requiring an interaction with the game client.

3. Devs check it out, confirm that it does not, in fact, violate ToS or EULA or actually interact with STO.

4. Devs can now re-prioritize Feature A because if somebody really wants it they can use external program. It stays on the list but drops to 2681/7400, right above PvP maps and Klingon content.

5. Devs create a process by which things get evaluated. Nothing ever gets better than a "use at your own risk" rating, but things also get a "no you can't do that and we'll ban you if we catch you" rating.

What takes more time, developing something or vetting something brought to you by a community member?

Check out renimalt's post. They can point at the ToS all day but it doesn't address the specific situation. They've provided a combat log function, it can provide data in real time to a file outside of STO which can be acted upon seemingly without violating the ToS.

So somehow when you do it makes it unacceptable? Even though it interacts with neither the game code nor the client?

UGC (and I ain't talking Foundry) happens. Don't take a draconian CYA across the board policy. Be progressive, work with the talented community members that STO has drawn to it in an open manner. Critically examine each community authored offering on its own merit.

And none of those individuals work for cryptic thus any idea they have is a third party creation subject to all manner of legal problems... Remember STO is not open source. People can suggest ideas in the forums, but until the devs decide to implement that suggestion using their code and methodolgy that's as far as things go. So no, whether or not a feature should be part of the UI, it's not relevant. The only aspect which is relevant is how any 3rd party tool interacts with Cryptic's proprietary code. Your example is fine up to step 2, then it completely falls over both due to resource and legal issues.

And Cryptic is extremely unlikely to answer in the specifics on the forums as the TOS is essentially a legal document. They'll tell you, rightly, what the rules are but not how they'll react in any specific scenario.

The foundry is an entirely different discussion as it's a tool provided by cryptic using and interacting with Cryptic assets in a manner 100% controlled by Cryptic.